Alexandersmap

    Tag: If I Should Fall Behind

    • My Love and I

      The water is wide, I can’t cross o’er
      And neither do I have wings to fly
      Give me a boat, carry two
      And both shall row
      My love and I
      — Pete Seeger, The Water is Wide

      There’s a marriage occurring in the family this weekend, and it got me thinking about my own. I’m approaching three decades together, which makes us uniquely qualified to talk about long-term relationships, I suppose. But then I look at my in-laws, married for 61 years and counting, through the epic highs and devastating lows that a couple of humans can experience together. It makes me wonder about the years to follow, having ridden that roller coaster along with them for almost half of their marriage. As my favorite Navy pilot used to say, “I’ve seen the future and I don’t like it”. But we can still make the most of it. Amor fati.

      Life’s challenges are best endured together. We are each distracted and busy, annoyed at times with the world and with each other, but we return to each other always. A marriage can be seen as a boat that rides out the storms and keeps a relationship alive. Or you can look at it as a contract between two able-bodied people who agree to stick it out together when one or both are not so able-bodied anymore. We generally meet our mate when we’re at our peak fitness level and full of potential. They see that potential and bet on us, as we do with them. Sometimes that bet works out really well, and sometimes it doesn’t. But the thing about humans is that we’re at our best when we invest ourselves in others. The load is heavy enough as it is. Better to carry it together.

      Now everyone dreams of love lasting and true
      Oh but you and I know what this world can do
      So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see
      And I’ll wait for you, and if I should fall behind wait for me
      — Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      We forget sometimes, in our focus on meeting the moment, that we are life partners until the end. Life reminds us of our fragility, in body and in spirit. We lift each other up or drag each other down, and this becomes habituated. Simply put, the dynamic in a relationship becomes our normal. Best to have a partner that lifts with us, rather than drag us down constantly. I’m blessed with one of those. I hope you are or will be too.

      So how does a marriage endure? There’s no secret, really. It’s all the things you’d expect: patience and love, listening and lingering in moments together, appreciating the best and accepting the less-than-best about each other. But I think it’s mostly about feeling gratitude for having found someone willing to row that boat with you across the wide water. Someone who will wait for us to catch up to where we ought to be, as we will for them when they fall a step behind (knowing deep down it’s usually us falling behind). There are no secrets to long relationships, there’s only the commitment to seeing it through.

    • Giving Yourself Away

      “We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day. Harm and boon in the meetings…” – Jack Gilbert, Harm And Boon In The Meetings

      I’ve had a book of poetry by Jack Gilbert for a couple of years now, but never really felt the pull of the pages to immerse myself in it until now. He’s grieving in this poem, which is more apparent as it progresses beyond my quote, but I’m drawn to the analogy of wood reaching out to the flame. All relationships are this dance between giving yourself away and in consuming the other half of the relationship as they give themselves away. It’s this concept of what you and your partner bring to the relationship today, tomorrow and the next day. Some days you give well more than your 50%, sometimes you give a lot less, but the sum of the two gets you closer to 100%. Balance. Yin and Yang. Order and Chaos in a perfect unity.

      The damage happens when one partner is always being consumed while the other burns. We’ve all been on both sides of that, whether in a friendship, a job or a marriage. Those relationships either end when one half burns out of the other jumps to another fuel source. I’m no relationship coach, but I’m approaching 25 years of marriage of playing both the fire and the wood. That gives me some level of experience in the subject, if never truly expertise. There seems to be plenty of fuel left to keep our fire burning for whatever time we’re given, and it comes back to the lyrics of the song that started it all for us, pointing to this concept of the dance between fire and the wood:

      “Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true
      But you and I know what this world can do
      So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see
      And I’ll wait for you
      If I should fall behind
      Wait for me”
      – Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      Maybe this should have been a Valentine’s Day post, but the reality is that the real work of relationships starts after the honeymoon, after the flowers and chocolates of Valentine’s Day, after the fire’s been burning for awhile. That’s when you know if you’re relationship is more than just tinder. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy. I keep coming back to this line, and recognizing myself and a lifetime of relationships in the words. We all offer ourselves to the world, and sometimes we’re burned badly. A fire does similar damage to a forest, but the forest often comes back stronger. A relationship is resilient when both sides recognize themselves in the fire and the wood – consumption and fuel – and each strives for balance in what they bring to it.